So, Ms. England's family releases pictures of her

having fun with other rednecks at home in WV, so we can see what kind of person she really is...I'm sure there are a lot of pictures of Jayson Williams playing basketball and having fun, before he was a murderer. What is the point of this?


failure.

(no coffee yet)

Let's say it did not exactly improve my picture of the England family.
:shrug:

:puke:

was when she said, "My sister would give anyone money if you asked, she'd give you money and she wouldn't want any money in return."

Yeah. I'm sure she went ahead and slipped that guy a $50 before she put the leash on. It's funny how uneducated people like the England family think it's all about money.. it'll fix anything.

failure.

during testimony yesterday. They don't want our stinking compensation. They already had disdain for the "almighty dollar" many Americans - including our pResident - worship. We offered, what? Millions of dollars in reward money for Osama's head? Nothing yet. Our money doesn't mean anything to his followers. It's NOT ABOUT money. And they just don't get it. Offering to pay people off to make it up to them for torturing them or their relatives isn't the point. In fact, I suspect they'd regard it as another insult, and feel more like spitting on our money if we gave it to them.

They have totally dismissed and overlooked the fine points of the culture in the Arab world, I guess, because the only sustained relationships they have over there are with other rich oil barons (Saudi sheiks and royalty). If you never bother to venture outside the palace, how can you possibly know or even begin to relate to the entire rest of the world that exists outside the palace? I guess because our "leaders" are in it for the money, they assume everyone else is, also, and that everyone else thinks like they do and lusts after what they do. They don't. They never bothered to realize that other peoples value other kinds of "currency," and actually bow to other gods.

in history...that tends to be the mindset.

failure.

If this is where she comes from then it's easy to see how she could easily agree to torturing those "evil Muslims."

One guy said it was just terrible. They never said what the antecedent of "it" was: the torture or the treatment of the torturer.

"I do not believe Lyndie did what is in the photographs"

Trot out the sister to tell the world not to believe their eyes, what you're seeing in the photographs didn't really happen.

England and every soldier, officer, and civilian up to and including Bush belong on trial in The Hague for war crimes.

would just give you money if you asked her, and she wouldn't want any money back"

I'm sorry, what the f does that have to do with this?

never joined a fraternity, so she knows it can't be true.. Hannity said so :eyes:

sister can believe that monkeys are going to be flying out of her ass next week all she wants, but that doesn't change the fact that her sister committed a crime, mugged for the camera TWICE, posed with her hands grasping a lynching noose around the neck of a man lying on the floor.

Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

Let's ask sister-girl if she'd like for her child to be stripped naked and posed exposing their anus to the lens and have the perpetrator take pictures and mug for the camera, then send the photos around the world via the internet? I didn't think so.

Hitler's picture around, isn't it?

...who just kept saying that "they were following orders"....

And what's up with the comments from the family and friend saying "they are just pictures and she was posing"...

POSING? Oh, lets see she slipped them $50 and they agreed to strip down and writher in agony and humilation while she slipped a dog collar on them for a photo op....

Denial is a powerful thing, isn't it?

because all I am visualizing now is the hog riding contest, with someone yelling out 'let me hear you squeal!!!!", while the banjo plays in the background.:evilgrin:

she was...nt

...there were no pix/avatars of Ned Beatty to use for this reply...

You know if this wasn't all really happening, you couldn't make a movie or screenplay with this kind of plot and have people think its believable....

never the real thing. Very sad. Now that you mentioned it, though, I think I will search for a picture of Ned Beatty from that infamous scene and maybe try to do a bit of photoshopping. Maybe I will have some fun with it.

is that the pictures "do it" the words just aren't enough.

let's just call those people "trash". White trash, if we need an adjective, but their ugliness has nothing to do with trailers.

What I am looking forward to is the day we get to the Park Avenue trash behind this :evilgrin:

I have been responding to all those who talk about trailer trash. I live in a mobile home and I very much resent the term "trailer trash."

I suspect that a lot of smug middle-class people will soon be living in trailers.

Hell, a nice trailer would be a step up from where I live now. I'm seriously thinking of getting one.

...so we can hi-tail it to Canada or Mexico when the fascists come for us...

I can just hitch my house up to a truck and head north.

:)

For one, no high house payments. I own my trailer and only have to pay $289 lot rent, which includes garbage pickup and water. And if you get into a really nice mobile home park like I live in, they are extremely strict on the upkeep of your home. If my grass gets over 2 inches high, I get notices to cut it or else be fined. Same for any exterior painting and other upkeep.

A more appropriate term would be "pre-fabricated" housing.

The places you describe are not "mobile" at all. Once they are trucked to their site, the wheels come off, and they remain their till they rot or the site is redeveloped.

In order to "buy" one, you "buy" the home, lot, etc. - same for renting.

These "mobile" homes stay with the property.

There are mobile homes in my park that are moved out all the time. The wheels are still in place and in some cases, the hitch is still intact. I bought my home which was already on a lot and I am paying lot rent. And if I care to move, I can have my home hauled out because the wheels are still attached, though the hitch was taken off because it is an eyesore.

Maybe they are in a few spots where you live, but every other place I've been from the east coast to the west, what I said stands.

I wouldn't say all, but I bet it's a high majority.

...I used that term and it was unintended to offend people who live in a trailer and assume that they are of the same ignorant ilk as some of these war criminals...Hey, I'm a "Marin Hot-Tubber" as Daddy Bush referred to me as when our local Taliban Fighter Walker was apprehended...hey, speaking of him, maybe we should have Amnesty Int'l talk to him about his treatment by US soldiers...

Hope you know I didn't mean to offend...my ignorance :(

No one is upset with you & we understood your emphasis was on "trash". Personally, I prefer the term White Trash but then I'm afraid I'd have a bunch of White people jumping on me thinking my emphasis was on White and not on Trash.

Trash or Freeper Trash, I think, is our safest bet because it covers the trash of all colors from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave to the thuggish trash in the slums of Detroit ;)

Marin? Cool, you're not too far & I look forward to meeting you at the next Bay area gathering. There's a protest march in June. Check the Activism forum from time to time because that's how we'll start hooking up for it. We have a kick-ass group here :)

Peace

Thanks for not coming to blows over a phrase. Lenny Bruce would be proud.

At Free Republic, there would have been a shooting by now.

thanks neighbor :)

life were lived out in a trailer. Me and my baby girl. :hi:

YES! I love it!!!!!!!

namely that people on Park Avenue have a lot more power than people on Tobacco Road.

The levers of economic and political power in this country are not in the hands of poor country people.

little Charlie Manson playing cowboys and indians.

:cry: What a cute little tyke!

treated her. Tom Hamill says his captors treated him well, providing him with medical attention, food, and an oil lamp.

look what we do to them.


failure.

that right-wingers on radio talk shows keep bringing up what was done to "poor Jessica". Never mind that Jessica clearly stated she wasn't abused and that she had been well cared for, all they choose to remember is that she was abused.

fill 'em with bullshit.

failure.

Loved Robert Blake in Baretta (loved the white bird more).

would you refer to her "having fun with other spics at home in Nuevo Laredo"? If Richard Perle's family released some photos intended to make him look like a nice guy, would you comment on the "kikes"?

I'm not trying to jump on your personally or anything, but no matter how casually and often the word "redneck" gets thrown around here at DU, it is every bit as offensive as the ones I used in my examples. It is a term of hatred, specifically class hatred, something that we sould have no tolerance for.

I'm white and not offended by the term redneck, I take the Cris Rock route. There are poor white folks, and their are rednecks, if you can't recognize the difference, maybe you have the problem?

If not, then whether you are offended by the word or not is irrelevant.

I come from a long line of miners and small farmers in rural Alabama, and they endured hardships that few modern Americans can imagine. Their reward was to have pampered, comfortable people who were spared such hardships call them rednecks. I don't think that's right.

"ain't skeeered" or the confederate flag on their pickup. my grandfather was a coal miner, but not a redneck.
\

failure.

but I grew up in the ohio valley, and I use the term lightly. It's not a racial slur like kike or spic. two different worlds.


failure.

That's a sincere question, by the way. I'm genuinely curious about why slagging on some people because of their class origins is better than slagging on others because of their racial origins.

is yuppie a class slur>?

then it certainly is.

But the two words are not exactly parallel. "Redneck" has a long history as a word applied to all members of a particular social class, regardless of their attitudes, opinions, etc. From its very beginning, the word "yuppie," which only goes back twenty years or so, has been identified with materialism, self-absorption, etc.

In other words, "redneck" has long been used to apply to all rural poor whites, particularly in the South, while "yuppie" has always applied to a particular subset of a larger class. No one here would call, say, Chelsea Clinton a yuppie, even though she's young, urban, professional, and rich.

a particular social class. Certainly all southerners are not rednecks. and I hope you are not insinuating that's what I'm doing. and btw...Chelea Clinton is a yuppie.

though some people here have no trouble at all writing off everyone in the South as rednecks, trash, or worse.

The point I'm trying to make is that words have histories, and they also have power. It doesn't negate all that for someone to insist, "Well, when I say ___ I'm only talking about ___."

My father grew up in a mining village in rural Alabama. Though he is nearly 70, he still vividly remembers the shame of going to school barefooted and in patched overalls and being taunted by the town kids, the ones with shoes and nice clothes, indoor plumbing, electric lights, etc. They called him a redneck. They didn't quiz him on his political and social views first, I might add. He was poor and country, so he was a redneck. Case closed.

So how do you suppose someone with his life experiences reacts when he hears someone who claims to be on his side denouncing rednecks? Does he know their own secret, personal definitions of the word? Or does he know the one that has been applied to him all his life?

on edit:

He was poor and country, so he was a redneck. Case closed.


Those things do not make him a redneck.. a dixie flag on a pickup, with "ain't skeered" on the windshield, and maybe Calvin pissing on a chevy emblem..and maybe.


my grandfather was a coal miner in the ohio valley, and he was certainly not a redneck and had very little tolerance for them.

the smug, pampered ones who called people like my father rednecks, not your own personal definition of the word.

I have no problem with the word Redneck. It is a state of mind, not a class or race designation. And white folks are not a victimized group.

kudos and salutations for the well stated clarification!:toast:

It could be equated with "country boy" or something similar. It's not always a slur, and a very light one at that.



where i'm from, a hoosier is a bad thing to be.

fellow homos.

That's a very different thing from someone who's not a homo calling me a homo.

Some words mean something different inside the group than outside it.

when they come from someone outside the group. It's why Chris Rock's comic riffs on race would not be funny coming from, say, Dennis Miller.

And there are plenty of country homos, as anyone who has hung out in a gay bar here in the South can tell you. I remember once trying to patch up things between two Chilton County High School football jocks who were having a tearful lover's quarrel. This happened at a long-gone but definitely not forgotten Birmingham bar called Mabel's Beauty Parlor and Chainsaw Repair. (I also saw a lesbian Hank Williams Jr. impersonator there once.)

when they come from someone outside the group. It's why Chris Rock's comic riffs on race would not be funny coming from, say, Dennis Miller.

I really can appreciate that.

failure...

It took me a long time to understand what local DJs meant when they talked about the hoosiers. I am not from St Louis.

I do see some of these terms as a form of class bias though. In St Louis the one question almost everyone is asked at one time is, what high school did you attend? It's asked so that one can be pegged socio-economically..oh if you went to a south side public school then you obviously are a hoosier who can't read or write. If you went to Ladue then you are obviously a rich kid who has never had to work for a thing in your life. Let's not even get into how people who attend private (catholic or otherwise) schools are judged in St Louis.

It's about power relationships--racial slurs are damaging because they are part of an entire social structure of white dominance and discrimination.

Do you not also think that there is such a thing in this country as class dominance and discrimination?

If there is, do you see why a person of a lower class would object to having a person of a higher (i.e. dominant) class apply a label to them that signifies their lower position?

Although we are very reluctant to talk about class at all in this country--most people here think they are "middle class."

But I don't see "redneck" as a "class" slur, but as a regional or even a personal attack on someone's perceived ignorance. I think Pschoeb's post makes a very convincing argument as to why the term originated in the South, especially. Corn was the staple of the southern diet for decades.

That has been carefully cultivated in this country. Every American is middle-class. We're like Lake Wobegone, where all the childen are above average.

But what matters here is not how you, personally, or how I, personally, define the word in question. It's how the people it's directed at define it, and that's a matter of a long history that you and I can't change.

To use the example I used in another post, my father grew up in a mining camp in rural Alabama. Though he is nearly 70, he still remembers the shame of going to school barefooted, in patched overalls, and the way the town kids would taunt him. Their favorite taunt, of course, was redneck, along with hick, bumpkin, etc. And they didn't make any effort to ascertain his political and social views. It was enough for them that he was poor and country. That's how the word has historically been used, and those are still its main connotations.

So when someone like my father hears people who live and grew up and look and talk like him denounced as rednecks, particularly by fellow Democrats, how do you suppose he reacts?

Upon reflection, I believe you are correct--not just "country," but POOR. That would definitely be a comment on a person's class status.

Especially when it is usually, and often, preceeded by the word "fucking" as an adjective.

My point was that the dominant group may not like being called a racial slur, but the subordinate group does not have the power to deny them education, jobs, or housing.

WE ARE!

It is horribly racist and bigoted.

To try to excuse it with some polemic about class oppression, of which I have no part in, is way over the top, and is just as bad as the trash family trying to justify the sub-human trash daugher holding the leash.

That is the whole point of my reply.

You don't speak for anyone but yourself.

If you had stated the point you made in your reply to me, I would hve had no objection to what you have said.

Who would laugh and shrug if they were called gringos. And that most Mexicans would understand the difference between a white person calling them a "greaser" and a Mexican-American calling a white person a gringo. It's a power relationship--the Mexican-American does not have the same social power.

On edit: Gringo just means "foreigner," anyway. Mexicans used to call Americans "ham-sandwich eaters" as a slur--does that offend you, too?

Rush keeps telling me how victimized White people are. I thought he was on to something ;)



Have you seen that movie? American History X? It's awesome, I rarely buy videos but I'm thinking of making this one of my exceptions.

Wouldn't it be nice- a world with no color? A world where we accepted that everyone feels & hurts the same way?

You are truly an amazing person.

:hug:

to a freeper mentality, not social class.

There are two common etymologies for it.

One refers to the red scarves that early labor activists wore. The other, which is more widely accepted, refers to the fact that when you spend your days walking behind a plow in the hot sun, the back of your neck turns permanently red.

Neither one of those has anything to do with a freeper mentality.

Besides, I know a good many educated and affluent people who are, politically speaking, knuckledraggers. Yet I never see anyone here referring to them as rednecks. For some reason that term, which supposedly has nothing to do with one's birthplace or class, is reserved for poor, rural people.

When I hear people routinely refer to Bush, Cheney, Perle, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, etc. as rednecks, then I will believe that the word has solely to do with, in Cheswick's phrase, "a state of mind." But not until then.

The red scarves is unlikely, as there is no connection in early usage to labor activists.

The actual origin is having a red neck, and not from just sun exposure, (because most people will tan), but from extremely poor diet of almost exclusively corn.

It causes a serious B vitamin deficiency(specifically B3 Niacin) which one symptom is a red neck(from sun exposure caused nicain deficiency dermatitis). If they had soaked their cornmeal in ash like Native Americans did, this would have released the niacin, which is in an unusable form in regular corn, and corn is very low in tryptophan that can be converted into niacin in the body.


The other symptoms(disease called pellagra), especially if this deficiency occurs in childhood is poor mental development and also dementia in both children and adults. At the the time the term was coined no one knew about the deficiencies, they just noticed families with red necks tended to be quite slow. This condition was largely seen on the poorest of the poor farmers who worked marginal land.

The term roughneck has a probably similar origin, as the dermatitis appearance could be described as red and rough. both terms started in 1830's long before labor activists would be wearing red scarves.

Patrick Schoeb

i would also get offened if some compared "wetback" and "spic" to yupppie

hate is hate. Race hate, class hate, what have you--they're all hate and thus beneath people who claim to be liberals.

And there's really little parallel between "yuppie" and "redneck," as I discussed above. Yuppies are, by definition, privileged, but the class of people that so many blithely dismiss as rednecks have a long history of getting shafted by the system, going back to the origins of this country and beyond.

privileged because of there race but we have a long history of getting shafted by the system and being assualted and killed by "red necks" and other whites but i understand where you are coming from

Interestingly enough, poor whites here in the South, along with poor blacks, have been viewed in much the same way that Latinos have been and are viewed in the West--cheap, easily exploitable labor.

In the case of poor whites, that race privilege is the only privilege they have had, which is why they have clung to it so firmly, against their own interests. No matter how low they were, as they saw (see) it, at least they weren't (aren't) black. And the upper class has always been very good at playing on that sentiment, encouraging poor whites to identify with rich whites, rather than with the poor blacks whose economic interests they share. The establishment knows that if Americans ever come to identify along class lines, then their time at the top of the heap is over.

That's not to say, of course, that race isn't real and doesn't matter. It is and it does. But I do think that if people would give more thought to what they have in common with other people who work for a living, then there would be some big changes in this country. Hunger doesn't have a color. Wanting your children to get an education and a decent job doesn't have a color. Those things matter to all of us.

let race hatred drive wedge between us and organize and get shit done!!!

i would also get offened if some compared "wetback" and "spic" to yupppie


failure,

.. entitled "YOU KNOW YOU'RE A REDNECK WHEN...", then I'll stop using the term. When the REDNECKS stop lining up to see him, then I'll stop. You can take political correctness to the extreme, to the ridiculous. The term redneck comes from people who worked outdoors.. and got sunburned necks.. it's akin to blue collar.

I was jumping all over this kid when I first saw her "Deliverance" story and the immediate attacks and hits she took on here. Then I thought that there were a lot lf Lyndies and Jessicas in this military...also Joes and Tommys...young people sucked up into an alien world in a surreal environment.

The song "How Do They Keep 'em Down On The Farm"...came to mind...one written in World War I about our Doughboys going crazy on French women. My late father would talk about the strange places he was in on his way from St. Lo to Antwerp...all wrapped up in a haze of both age and war.

Reading the article on Lyndie she was looking for a career and did as many, went military cause she couldn't afford a real one (we'll leave that issue for another thread)...and then got sucked up into a machine that dragged her half-way around the world...with strange people and a system where extremes are exemplified.

Is Lyndie some S&M bitch? I doubt it, and I'd like to hear what she has to say. We might be surprised at her contrition. Her friends and family may well be right...she was a sweet, loveable person. But that was before she was sucked up into the machine. Now she's a victim of both that machine (she's prime scapegoat material) and our side as a posterchild for the machine's excesses. That's a real terrible place to be, just for wanting a cheap college education.

she was a looooooooong way from West Virginia. And usually when you grow up in a small-minded town like that, where you're pretty much closed off from the real world--it can make you do crazy things...especially if you've been programed to see the Iraqi people as animals...you put them on leashes.


failure.

We don't really know what type of person she was like prior to walking into that enlistment office, but we can agree she surely wasn't joining for some sexual thrill.

The confusing issue is the racist view we have of other people and cultures...and a very worthy discussion. Arabs have been demonized in our culture for the past 20 years (starting with the oil crisis) and 9/11 sent it into hyperdrive. I'm Jewish and grew up with my own Anti-Arab biases, thus I may see this differently than others.

She was caught up in a moment of just absolute surreal...that's all I can say. I don't know if you've known war veterans, but they'll talk...if they do...about the strange situations they faced and how they acted in ways they never thought they ever would.

To a degree this is what Kerry's being nailed on by the Chickenhawks. He was involved in "free fire zone fights"...shoot-outs where if it moved, you shot it...it was that or be shot...the "haze of war". Right now Lyndie and 130,000 of our young people are sucked up in that muck. We have to keep that in mind.

Now, if this was a contractor...someone willingly and knowingly there...then we've got a whole other story going.

....ignorance....Sadly, Lynndie and many others like her (in our Military and throughout the US) grew up surrounded by it. So many in our country grow up with poor education and a lack of knowledge of other people and places.

This administration knows that and plays upon the fears of these very same people. Why do you think in polls that such a large percentage of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein and Iraq had to do with 9/11? Ignorance and a lack of intellectual curiousity to seek the truth has led up to what is happening in this country.

Sadly, we are sending our children over to Iraq and elsewhere into environments that only breed that very same ignorance into the evil that is playing out. Excellent article on the Democratic Underground titled "The Childrens Crusades"...

Anyway, another interesting article to read is Seymour Hersh's article from the New Yorker about the abuses in the Iraqi prisons...he states too that the conditions and what we are sending our children into over there is ripe for creating these conditions.

I'm not making excuses for Lynndie England or any of these other individuals - I still believe in free will and I know that if I or any of the rest of the sane voices I see on this forum were say in Nazi Germany or at these prisons, we would have spoken out and not become a part of this insanity, even if it meant death, abuse, courtmartial, humiliation...Problem is most people wouldn't and can't stand up for the key things that make us human and ignorance blanks all that out....

Sorry for the rambling....I'm sleep-deprived....

I know that if I or any of the rest of the sane voices I see on this forum were say in Nazi Germany or at these prisons, we would have spoken out and not become a part of this insanity, even if it meant death, abuse, courtmartial, humiliation...Problem is most people wouldn't and can't stand up for the key things that make us human and ignorance blanks all that out....

... there were some in Nazi Germany who refused to follow orders and absolutely nothing happened to them. I guess there was always someone else willing to do the deed if one individual refused, but the point is that it was possible to refuse.

I wonder what would have happened if one of these U.S. soldiers had refused to participate? Maybe there are some who did?


Ignorance and a lack of intellectual curiousity to seek the truth has led up to what is happening in this country.

I think that there are probably a lot of people who simply don't care... and can't care. Because the people on this board are vitally interested in following these kinds of things, we tend to assume that everyone else is... or else they must be weird or stupid or whatever.

Perhaps more so than at any time in my lifetime, people are struggling just to get by, and a whole lot of people are falling through the cracks and winding up on the streets. A lot of people are close to the edge. They don't have time for intellectual curiosity or seeking the truth. They are trying to survive.

I do think that we all were blindsided by the sheer meanness of this administration. I know I was disappointed with the election results and what followed, but I thought the country would manage to muddle through, as we did with Nixon, Reagan, et al, until the next election at least.

I certainly don't know all the answers, but I do think that the most important thing is to get everyone registered and to get everyone to vote this year. I think there is a lot of dissatisfaction out there, and I think it's up to those of us who do have the time to try to get everyone past the point where they feel that they don't or can't make a difference and to get them involved in voting.

People are so busy these days trying to make ends meet and take care of their families and meanwhile don't even see that this administration is counting on them being too busy to notice what is happening in this country.

Most people, even if they weren't living wealthy and high in the 80's and 90's have never known the difficulties of past generations or even of War etc...They can't conceive and manage to even contemplate that evil exists right now and that they are in power.

My father in law is a retired professor...he said the same thing as you regarding managing through the times of Nixon, Reagan et al, but he said too that this is different...

People need to come out and register to Vote and VOTE in masses...That's where you and I and the rest of the folks on this Forum can make a difference! (and maybe move to a Battleground State for the next 6 months? - I'm in CA....it will go Democratic for Kerry, but what about Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Arizona, Oregon, Pennsylvania etc....)

OOPS - Got to go! Baby just woke up and so did my 4 year old....I'll look forward to picking up with all my new found Underground Dem's later....

he kept telling the contractors who were coming to get prisoners that he would not release them without the right paperwork.

I chucked when I read that because I can just imagine him challenging them to leave a paper trail.

"Per SOP, fill out this paperwork"

They never did. And he's off the hook. If you need the name and/or link, let me know.

Mike Malloy calls it "dumbing down of America". This is a failure of a culture that glorify sexy and white to diverse. It's a myopic view where we're superior in everything...from music to military and it's never questioned of this dominance. We all feel it in one form or fashion. One hopes, age brings the true appreciation of the fundamental freedoms the founders of this country attempted to set up. These kids haven't had to face that world, yet.

Rest well.

I blame BFEE primarily for this. But those who put all their enthusiasm in it are not being demonized - they are demons by now. It comes a point when one's actions reveals one's loss of humanity. Whatever this woman started as, she is now a brute.

....she's 5 mos pregnant (dad is the smiling guy next her)...what will their family values be? Gee, Mommy, tell me again how you and Daddy met? Was it before, during or after you abused those poor people and took time out to smile about it?

and if she wasn't before, she definitely became so over there.

Having sex in front of prisoners and forcing them to watch is the latest thing I read. I can't even imagine how sick one must be to exhibit oneself in such a hell-hole and to such a modest, captive audience.

of England, condone, what she has done. Secondly, some are even acting like she didn't do anything at all? Did you see her "lawyer" say, when this is over, she won't be portrayed like she's being portrayed now...what the hell is that.

on second thought, he may be right. when the real bad stuff comes out, she'll be portrayed in a far more disgusting way.


failure

I get a feeling a flood of Lyndies and others are about to visit our TVs and puter screens. Yep, the blame goes right to the head of the rotten fish...and we need to keep the heat there, not on the victims...and she's definitely now a victim.

She's a victim and will have to take responsibility for her actions (Freewill) and her own Karma....

However your so right - the real menace and "cancer" cause came from the top down...and we need to all keep the focus on them...

Personally, I think the Lynndies et al need to be punished for their crimes and serve their time, however, I wouldn't be opposed to giving them some sort of "amnesty" of sorts (like we won't give them back to the Iraqi's?) in exchange for names and info on who, what and where and what was really going on and which commanders and generals etc. knew....

For how much can we apologize? Where do we draw the line.

I agree that there's a fuzzy gray line somewhere in there but at one point people need to assume responsibility for having outright crossed the line.

Frankly, I hardly want to focus on her now because she's just a small cog in an evil machine, as you point out.

Thanks for your forthrightness about the biases. I think you're seeing this thing more clearly than many of us.

Absolute surreal. I hate her but I hate the people behind her even more. For here I can find a small part, a small moment of understanding but having been caught up in the madness and not having a good enough moral foundation to say NO but for the monsters who orchestrated this, I can find no moment in my heart.

Lynndie Johnson is finished. Her only redemption now is in front of God because the world will never forgive her. May the world not forget to look for the people behind her, the real culprits who took what was debatably a 'normal' American and turned her into this object of repulsion.

Had this war not happened, had Lynndie Johnson not been sent to Abu-Ghaibr, she'd probably be at McDonald's kinly asking if you "want fires with that" or unobtrusively working in some back-room of some corporation.

I despise her but I won't revile her. This scandal goes much deeper than poor little Lynndie Johnson.

When the military throws a Brigadier General to the angry crowd, you KNOW they're protecting something so much more.

it stemmed from anti arab racism. http://www.adc.org/index.php?id=2231

really sweet people who were just following orders iam sorry that is utter bullshit

... that loves one another, they are trying to put a human face on the person that most of us see as a monster. I don't blame them one bit for wanting to do that, and I feel sorry for them. Sooner or later, though, they will come to grips with the fact that something went terribly wrong.

There are stages of grief, and one of the stages is denial. Another is bargaining. In this respect, what the family is doing right now seems normal.

They are facing a long time of anger and sadness, and I hope they can come out of it on the good side, but that remains to be seen I guess.

I'm sorry to read that some people are calling them "rednecks" and such. I'd guess that there are a lot of dysfunctional kinds of things going on there, but imagine how startled they would be to see that there are other ways to behave. Wow! Cruelty is not destiny! It's not going to be easy, but we could try to show them.

I'll confess that I've thought of that very same term "redneck" for what we see going on, but its really the word "ignorance" that we are looking for....something that I believe each of us on this forum is trying to avoid in our own lives....

although not and answer or excuse.


failure.

...come in...I believe she and anyone else who perpetrated either directly or had knowledge (and certainly those who ordered these actions) all be punished for their actions. I do however believe that the privates on the bottom of the scum pond may take the fall...

Heard a quote from "Man on Fire" w/ Denzel Washington - Message to Rummy "Forgiveness (to your apology) is between them and their God - I just make the introductions....Maybe someone will introduce Rummy to the victims and their families...

until he got a young female off by herself.

anymore than Yuppie is.


failure.

but give it up and get on with the rest of your battle. If part of your audience tells you they can't connect because of a certain word, then just give in & keep forging.

Some of that audience means it sincerely and better to cater to them than to the distractors who just want to distract you & get you off-message ;)

Let's hear more about him, eh?

His name is Charles Graner...nice guy tou want to bring home to the parents and ofcourse have raising children...

and I'm only referring to the people involved, and not what happened. Doesn't it take a certain kind of person to do these things? Are they Christians?

failure

:)

...was her friend saying how she was smiling at the people BEHIND the camera, not the people in the pictures. Makes sense. She probably didn't even SEE the people in the pictures.

But Pointer Girl isn't the issue here! It's the trash at the top of the food chain who are the problem!!

Impeach Rummy... then Smirk 'n' Sneer...

n/t

They have very little with which to defend her. Parents usually try to defend their children and tend to see them as innocent. I can't blame the family for trying to help her, although I wonder if they think what she did was wrong. They said what happened wasn't her fault, but I've never heard them decry the torture.

...I'd express my shock at their actions and want to know more...I wouldn't make excuses and I seek some serious counseling for myself...oh yeah - and change my name (just kidding)

Actually, in all seriousness, listening to their excuses just shows their ignorance and lack of understanding to the world around them...the fact that they could even suggest they were just "posing"?

Huh?

The smile on her face is what haunts me...

But I and (I assume) you, are not from a rightwing trailer park culture. From my perspective as a parent, I would want to know the totality of facts before condemning my kid. I would want to believe the best case scenario for my son/daughter until proven otherwise. But I probably wouldn't go public until I knew. That's the difference I believe.

smart educated christians. how hard is it to imagine taking an uneducated, 20 year old kid adn brainwashing her. she is no more the monster than you and i. she was placed in an enviroment, her brain sucked out, and in place a chip of behavior.

look she gets to be punished and pay the price for her action, but she was away from family that would otherwise take care of her, with the army to take care of her. that is where she put her trust

and we have a nation that has allowed themselves to be brainwashed and they didnt have nearly the intensity of brainwashing this girl did

just my view

just my view...

huh

this is a quote from seabeyond's post to which you were replying. Perhaps you didn't notice it.

i don't think excuses are being made for lindy's behavior.

the point is perhaps best made by reminding everyone that this dumb kid didn't just one day decide to drive to iraq on a lark to pick up a six pack.

bush and rummy and all the rest sent her there, under false pretenses

The more we harp on lindy and the other peons at the bottom, the more pleased karl rove will be.

before I forget what I was thinking...does that ever happen to you?


failure.

:)

without a dead kid in sight.

and the other guards immediately involved.

Of course she and the other direct participants should be severely punished, but i see the republicans more and more building this up as a crime of errant individuals; thus, after they are dealt with the bushies will declare the matter closed and dumb americans will oooh and ahhh over the quick resolve of our great leader. :eyes:

by focusing so sharply on these grunts at the bottom of the food chain we're feeding into the white house spin.

what does anyone else think?

i am with you

and vids come out...what will be the explanation be then????

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4925881/

edited for new link...

“I think it was more her smiling at the people behind the camera,” according to family friend Destiny Goin. “I don’t think she was smiling at the people in the picture — just behind the camera.”


The fact that she's mugging for the camera with the profit of her criminal behavior behind her is the problem. She's no better than those of her ilk who stood and mugged for the camera at lynchings last century.

what the hell are these criminals smiling about?

just putting it into perspective.

her baby daddy?

I've given up on some people in these small towns that actually defend what this woman did. The fact that they said she was just a paper-pusher, who used to "visit" her friends in the prison who were taking care of the prisoners, tells me that she did all this sick shit as more of a hobby, than official duties. She processed paperwork of new arrivals... according to what they said her job was, she had no official reason to be interacting with them at all. I think these incidents came while her friends were there, and she was just hanging out. That makes the pleas that she was "following orders" all the more ludicrous.

I dont care if they show a photo of her getting communion.. what she did, and her silly ass grin, is just inhuman.